Magali Reus: Spring for a Ground

<p>The nonfunctional combination locks and sidewalks in Magali Reus’s exhibition <em>Spring for a Ground</em> evoke a sense of order and logic that, paradoxically, evades analysis. The locks appear to operate by month, weekday, and color, and the street curbs contain objects and patterns, both providing nagging clues to a system we can’t quite grasp. One is reminded of George Perec’s book <em>An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris</em>, in which he takes note of all the events and things appearing at Place Saint-Sulpice during one weekend in 1974: “A woman goes by; she is eating a piece of tart,” “A bus. Japanese,” “A 63 goes by,” “Pigeons on the plaza.” This exhaustion of place reminds us only of what is missing. A catalogue of things and events, mostly mundane, condenses time into passing moments that might have been noticed, and likely not. In her work, Reus similarly observes, in detail, seldom-considered public places and mechanisms, and produces something surreal and puzzling out of them. Ostensibly less empirical in approach than Perec, Reus likewise takes inventory of time and space, collecting things that have moved through the urban landscape; in recording them, she finds the poetic in the clinical…</p>